Adding Weight – fat or muscle? +broodmare diets

[AngelaM]

Welcome Liz!

I am a beginner as well and as such don’t have specific answers for you. However, I would suggest you to listen to the podcasts and really get a handle on the material that way. It is a bit complicated, there is a lot to it but I think it will help you and I think it’s important for us horse owners to understand from the basics up. I’m sure someone will weigh in with advice specific to your situation with breeding mares and if you have a solid base with the physiology of nutrition it will be that much easier to understand and implement.

[LizLundEquestrian]

Hi @angela !! I have listened to alllll of the podcasts lol! It does confuse me a bit so I thought I would throw these questions out there!

[Doc-t]

1) Do we want any fat on the horse’s body? Like do my “skinny” horses (which I would say is 2 of them) need more muscle or fat or both? What I’m seeing on why I think they are skinny: More ribs visible, hip bone, top of butt. Only one of these horses has been a “chronically” skinny horse and the other one I think is growing. The chronically skinny one has a low fat belly but they is runny and bony hips and butt.

When we look at the “weight” of a horse it is a combination of fat and muscle plus bone, water, gas and minerals. Everyone has a different percentage of each and this can be determined by genetics, environment, personality and the makeup of the bacteria, viruses and parasites within and around the body. In addition, weight can be affected by disease and inflammation both acute and chronic.

What is often not discussed in a conversation about skinny or fat horses is the demeanor of the horse such as depressed, happy, “normal” or having a lazy or powerful work ethic. To me, this is more important as only a healthy horse will be “happy” and have a good work ethic. Sometimes this can be elusive to horse owners (and even the human if we want to include this in our discussion). I have seen skinny (lack of body fat) in both horses and human that are miserable and even drop dead while the ones with excess body fat play and live long. What I find is that some horses and people will be fat and happy, skinny and happy, skinny and miserable and skinny and happy.

So your question: “Do we want any fat on the horse?” Is hard to answer. For me a better question is this: “Is the horse healthy and happy?” However, excess fat is usually associated with inflammation and disease especially visceral (abdominal) fat. Excess body fat is usually an excess of sugar intake beyond the needs of the horse. Excess visceral fat (around the organs of the body such as the kidneys, heart, mesentery) is sometimes seen in skinny people (marathon runners) who drop dead. They have a hormonal problem as well as inflammation.

Where does this leave us with our horses? In a tough spot because humans are still discussing which blood values of what indicator mean what to the health of the human. In horses, veterinarians are testing for insulin resistance, ACTH (Cushings / PPID) and a few other things but they are not yet sophisticated to be looking at uric acid, cholesterol or apoB as they are in human medicine. They are starting to look at genetic changes as indicators of disease (HYPP, EPSM, Vitamin E deficiency and others). Veterinarians are still in the dark as to the root causes of colic, asthma, laminitis and lymphangitis. Our horses are suffering from these diseases daily yet we are not on the money as to how to prevent these.

What can we change versus what are we unable to change? Captivity of any animal including humans has consequences. The art of being a horse owner is to look at each as an individual and address each one’s needs. This is the crux of your questions here and there are some basics. For example you can never have too much muscle or too little body fat for a competitive horse. However, what is the right percentage of muscle and fat for that individual horse? Comparing one horse to the others in a group experiencing the same environmental factors using only our eyes may confuse the picture. If the “skinny” horse is competing well and even being superior to the rest then do you really need to change the diet? Maybe this horse just needs more rest in between events or a less strenuous workout to conserve muscle and fat or maybe time to mature. There are no “rules” other than 1) avoid any inflammatory foods (grains and grain byproducts) and 2) include all things needed for maintenance (water, high quality protein. Other than this, there are no other rules that says one rule will work for all horses.

2) For my “skinny” horses, what would you recommend the next addition be? More so the chronically skinny one, as I think the other one is growing and may just need a little extra for a short time. A: increase hay B: add coconut C: add oats, if so, what kind?

If they can eat more forage than this is always the best route to take. Coconut meal (Coolstance) can help older horses gain body fat. Increasing soybean meal to 2 or even 3 pounds per 1200 pound horse who is in work will help to get the protein up to 1 gram per pound of body weight. This will help build muscle and is what human body builders do. While I am not a body builder, my protein intake is above average per day. In horses, the rule is the same as it is for humans: 0.5 to 1.0 grams of high quality protein per pound of body weight. 20 pounds of hay at 10% protein will give about 454g of good quality protein. 1 pound of SBM adds about 174g of high quality protein yielding a total of 624g of mixed quality protein For building muscle, adding another pound or two of SBM will meet their needs. But if the horse is already fat, adding this protein may also add body fat because the hormones are good at converting protein into sugar and thus increasing the sugar beyond their daily needs – yielding increased body fat.

3) Skinny brood mare on triple crown “growth”. She eats 1# soybean meal, 4# alfalfa pellets, 12# triple crown growth. Turnout ok big grass field in Minnesota, so grass is dead right now (which I think means the sugars go down into the roots?). Eats 25# grass hay. She has put weight on since she had her foal (may 2021), she is not pregnant currently. She looks best the last 4 months of her pregnancy. This foal I weaned at 4.5 months (typically I don’t wean them until around 7-8 months) because she was so thin, my thought process was her foal was literally “sucking” everything out of her.

Foals can “suck the weight off” of their mothers. It is common but the solution is NOT to add food to the mare as this will over feed the foal with often disastrous results. Weaning is the only solution and most foals are weaned in the early fall to get them ready to face the winter. Winter grasses are dormant meaning they are not producing starch but rather using it to remain alive for the next growing season. The cellulose becomes fat when digested by horses. By the way, where the plant stores it’s glucose is determined by the species – some in their roots (usually the tropical grasses) and some in the plant above the ground.

4) What to feed her to get her off the grain but not skinny? Why is she skinny? What are some other things to try?

Sometimes removing the grain (especially 25 pounds per day) adds body fat to hard keepers. It is the inflammation that is causing the skinniness. Try this first plus increase hay (last summer’s grass with higher sugar content than winter pasture).

5) Broodmare that is pregnant and an easy keeper. Best diet?

Hay and pasture plus water, salt and SBM. Adjust hay to reduce the body fat. Do NOT overfeed.

6) All vets/breeders in my area have said to feed a growth grain to get all the vitamins and minerals and “food” to the growing baby inside. My fat, currently pregnant broodmare is on 1# sbm, 6# alfalfa pellets and free choice hay right now. Is that “enough” for her while pregnant?

Absolutely!! Add a mined salt block.